There's a reason Brigadoon was a box office bomb. It has a lot of the parts for a hit, but they never come together. The stagy staging, changing from a song-based musical to a dance-based one to suit Kelly, the need to fill the Cinemascope screen with breadth and color, dubbing the female lead's one song, cutting others, the excessive cheeriness of the Brigadooners, etc.
We get the idea: everyone's looking for their perfect someone, who may only come along once and so you may need to risk it all for love. This is just the wrong format for it. Two Americans grouse hunting in Scotland (with no apparent clue about what they're doing) stumble upon a magical Scottish village that only appears for one day every hundred years. Neither group seem particularly curious about the out-of-time aspects of the other. Remember, to the Brigadoon folks this is only their 2nd day since the "miracle" happened.
Maybe the real problem is the "miracle" itself. To keep the village safe from 'witches', their saintly parson prayed that Brigadoon would have their one-day-per-century appearance. This would keep them so little in 'that' world that it couldn't intrude. There are some very specific requirements though, such that if anyone ever leaves Brigadoon will vanish forever, and an outsider can stay if he/she really, really loves someone in Brigadoon. Really loves, in just one day? And how was all this communicated to the village, since the pastor went outside of town for the miracle and was never seen again? The miracle seems more like a curse, imprisoning everyone inside the village forever. I mean, the one "rebel" just wanted to go to college! Someone leaving could end their existence in what to them could seem like only a few days later, when they could have kept truly living for years on without the miracle. Surely there was some outside contact in 1754, including trade in all those multi-colored fabrics everyone is wearing. What about just food? Why not just prevent the witches from entering Brigadoon, miraculously or otherwise? It's just hard to get around the premise.
Throw in cynical, alcoholic buddy Van Johnson - whose only shot, at night, kills the Scot trying to escape the miracle/curse (which is covered up totally) - who manages to talk Gene Kelly ("shiny" as ever) out of the love of his life in few curt sentences, and the result is a WTH? And yet there was another miracle clause that let's everyone live happily ever after. If you make stuff up, please be consistent.
We get the idea: everyone's looking for their perfect someone, who may only come along once and so you may need to risk it all for love. This is just the wrong format for it. Two Americans grouse hunting in Scotland (with no apparent clue about what they're doing) stumble upon a magical Scottish village that only appears for one day every hundred years. Neither group seem particularly curious about the out-of-time aspects of the other. Remember, to the Brigadoon folks this is only their 2nd day since the "miracle" happened.
Maybe the real problem is the "miracle" itself. To keep the village safe from 'witches', their saintly parson prayed that Brigadoon would have their one-day-per-century appearance. This would keep them so little in 'that' world that it couldn't intrude. There are some very specific requirements though, such that if anyone ever leaves Brigadoon will vanish forever, and an outsider can stay if he/she really, really loves someone in Brigadoon. Really loves, in just one day? And how was all this communicated to the village, since the pastor went outside of town for the miracle and was never seen again? The miracle seems more like a curse, imprisoning everyone inside the village forever. I mean, the one "rebel" just wanted to go to college! Someone leaving could end their existence in what to them could seem like only a few days later, when they could have kept truly living for years on without the miracle. Surely there was some outside contact in 1754, including trade in all those multi-colored fabrics everyone is wearing. What about just food? Why not just prevent the witches from entering Brigadoon, miraculously or otherwise? It's just hard to get around the premise.
Throw in cynical, alcoholic buddy Van Johnson - whose only shot, at night, kills the Scot trying to escape the miracle/curse (which is covered up totally) - who manages to talk Gene Kelly ("shiny" as ever) out of the love of his life in few curt sentences, and the result is a WTH? And yet there was another miracle clause that let's everyone live happily ever after. If you make stuff up, please be consistent.